


You Shall Bend

by Starki (ashaleighmarie)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Character Death, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, So much angst, This hurt me to write, but it had to be done, but the focus is on Tony and Loki, mild Thor 2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashaleighmarie/pseuds/Starki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time passed. He couldn’t tell how much. It felt like centuries. It was more likely months. Maybe years. It made him afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Shall Bend

From the first moment of his capture Loki’s thoughts were never far from Midgard, or the lover he had left behind. He had known that they would find him one day, Norns damn Heimdall’s all-seeing gaze, but he was well-practiced in hiding from the Gatekeeper, and he had thought he could keep up the ruse for long enough…  
He had been wrong.

_Or he had been betrayed…_

No.

He would not allow himself to think that way. Nothing he and Tony had shared had ever indicated that he would be happy to betray and overturn the man who shared his bed every night, who worked alongside him for all this time, and shared dark secrets with him in the night, things no one else could be trusted with, whispered to one another for safe keeping.

They had been together for four Midgardian years. Closer to five if the interaction prior to their courtship was included. Witty exchanges over streetlamps turned into rustic torches and crumbled asphalt from the stampeding of horse-drawn chariots, all to Loki’s great humor, turned to arguments on the roof of his glorious Tower, where he sometimes appeared just to alert the ever-aware Jarvis so that the Man of Iron would fly to the roof to complain about his presence at such unacceptable hours.

A particularly scorching debate had turned physical, and they had ended up grappling, tumbling together, until they were thrown off the roof and, in a blind moment of instinctive reaction, Loki rolled them both through the air so that they landed on his balcony rather than plummeting toward the street below. The fact that he didn’t release Stark before doing so to leave him to rescue himself with his suit was apparently enough of a shock to end the fight for the evening, and he had vanished, leaving them both with much to think about.

His next visit had been… tentative. They had circled each other like dogs, wary of invading territory, searching for where the lines blurred. They had shared a drink, and shared a little amusement over the memory, and he had left with intrigue stirring in his heart.

They still bantered and fought on the field, but in the Tower, they were different. They were no longer God of Mischief and Iron Man. They were merely Tony and Loki, and they still circled, but somewhat less warily, slowly growing familiar with one another. Until the evening when Loki’s mood had been worn thin and his polite mask was cracked and one wrong word had resulted in Loki dragging Stark in close by his throat and kissing him before vanishing into the night.  
Three weeks had passed before he had shown his face again, despite his knowing that the Stark had searched for him. When he had appeared once more, he was quiet, more subdued than he’d ever been, though his head remained high, ready to have their final argument before he was told to never return. Midgardians had a penchant for drama, and he could imagine that it would be a glorious last encounter, at least.

To say he was surprised when Tony grabbed him by the back of the neck, fingers curled into his hair, and dragged him into a greedy kiss with plenty of teeth, was an understatement.

Things had progressed from there with some predictability. They still clashed in the streets, with Thor and the other little team members watching. But as they spent more time together, the uncertain bond between them strengthened, and became trust.

Years had passed, and even for one who was used to the passage of time meaning little, he found himself surprised that they had moved so quickly.

Perhaps it was in part because he had known their time together was finite from the beginning, and he had already put an end date on it that was still many years away from where they had made it to. He had expected it to last until Stark died, of old age or some Midgardian illness or another. They should have had decades left before it became an issue.

_And yet here he was._

Chained, gagged, imprisoned. Dragged back to Asgard to be charged for his crimes, and then thrown into a cell to rot for the rest of his life. Thousands of years to sit and wonder how quickly the world was passing him by, how it might be changing. Bound away from it all, so he could no longer observe and experience the changes in things.

But even more than that, he had found himself thinking of Midgard. Of Tony. Wondering what he knew. Would Thor tell him that Loki had been recaptured, and locked away for the rest of his life? Would Tony wonder where he had gone?

Better that he had been captured away from the Tower. Away from anything that might have implicated Tony in somehow aiding him in eluding his capture for so long. If only his magic weren’t bound, he could have tried to make contact, just enough to reassure Tony, or even to watch, to make sure he was alive, safe, well.

To see if he had found anyone else.

The fact that he was torn between jealousy and worry over the idea, wanting Tony happy yet not wanting to be replaced, spoke of how little he had truly changed at heart despite his attachment to the mortal warrior.

But he was kept blind and dumb, with no visitors, no comforts, nothing but time and his own thoughts, and the books which Frigga had supplied for him. They were a small comfort, one he spat at during his days, or at least what he called his days, since he had no way of telling what the time truly was. But at night he curled around them and allowed them to lull him to sleep when even exhaustion could not drag him under for a few hours of relief.

Time passed. He couldn’t tell how much. It felt like centuries. It was more likely months. Maybe years. It made him afraid.

He couldn’t even ask for news, couldn’t beg for mercy. No one came to him. Books would appear and disappear as Frigga sensed his need for them. But they never spoke, under Odin’s own orders. The All-Father certainly never visited. Nor did Thor or Sif or the Warriors Three. No servants or aristocrats or slaves or children or soldiers, aside from the guards which patrolled the halls, and never stopped to speak to any prisoner, no matter how they screamed and begged and pounded. He knew, because he watched, listening sometimes to the desperate pleas turn into sobs and wails and then quiet defeat. Even the strongest could go mad from too much time, and these were hardly pillars of strength to begin with.

Even his own mind felt warped from the time that dripped by, so slow and yet so fast, so overwhelmingly out of reach while at the same time ruling over him completely.

When the chance for escape came, he took it.

Nevermind that he of all prisoners would be noticed if he went missing. Nevermind that it would no doubt be mere hours before he was found.

He needed to get out, even for only a moment. Just long enough to see. One last time.

He fled to Midgard while chaos still reigned in Asgard, while guards scrambled to control the masses of prisoners who had bolted, and for a brief and shining moment, overlooked the cage which held the Trickster, whose blankets were stuffed to appear occupied, to buy him as much time as he possibly could.

They would not be fooled long, but then he did not need long.

He went to the Tower first, landing on the roof. It felt familiar, and he laughed, wildly, as he stood there looking out over the city he had tried to destroy, and breathed deep of air not musty and shared quite so closely with others.

He found it odd that Jarvis had not already greeted him, or alerted his master of the God’s presence. He vanished, and reappeared on the balcony, outside the penthouse. He stepped inside, and found it dark, lit only by the sun, which cast shadows over empty space.

There was no furniture. No couch, no gleaming bottles over the bar, no Stark tablet on the table or shoes cast off by the door. It was abandoned.

He tried to deny the way his heart leapt and throbbed in his throat as he phased quickly from room to room, and even down to the lab, which was also dark, and what things couldn’t be moved had been covered in sheets, powered down.

It struck him harder than even the empty bedroom had, to see it all so dark. Never once in the years he had spent here had he seen the lab without power. Whether Tony had been in it or not, there had always been something running, some machinery humming and performing some task or another for the master of the Tower.

It was little wonder Jarvis had not responded to his arrival.

He forced himself to calm, and think. Time was still of the essence. If Stark had abandoned the Tower, he would merely have to find where he had moved to. It didn’t have to mean the worst. Not yet. He wouldn’t allow himself to leap to the very worst conclusions yet. Not when there was so much more of Midgard that could yet be hiding the man from him.

He traveled to Malibu next, a location he had heard his lover speak of often but rarely visited. Work had kept him at the Tower for a great majority of their time together, and so Loki hadn’t had any reason to investigate it.

But the home in Malibu was also dark and silent, abandoned. The fear had come back and lodged itself in his throat, thick and unbearable. Time weighed on him more heavily than ever. He stood on the cliffs and screamed his frustration and accomplished nothing aside from scaring the birds from the area.

He swore at himself, at Tony, for not leaving him any clues, for knowing so little that he could not think of where else he might need to look. Frustration was raw and creeping through his veins, making him tremble and pace and fumble with his thoughts and his actions. He needed to move, and quickly, but where?

He circled the Malibu home, from the outside, as if he might find a map to the next Stark location there, or some sign from his lover, so breadcrumb trail.

It was only his desperation that helped to register the gently-flapping scrap of black and white print which had been taped to the misshapen metal structure beyond the front door. He snatched the newspaper clipping from the statue and skimmed it.

Then stopped, with a terrible, low choking sound, and read it again.

Then he vanished, leaving the scrap of clipped text to drift to the ground, forgotten.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The silent congregation of grey headstones were eerie, and had him bristling with tension, feeling as though an electric current danced along his flesh, leaving every hair on end. He could feel the dead so strongly here, overwhelmingly so. He passed through the rows and rows of deceased with more care than he might have shown had they been living.

Out of respect for his daughter if nothing else, he was careful not to disrespect the dead of any realm, lest any of them unknowingly fall within her realm of control and he, by extension, disrespect her. He was far more interested in finding the one stone in particular which he desperately hoped did not truly exist.

Which meant, of course, that he found it all too quickly. The universe would never tire, it seemed, of forcing him to swallow still more pain, even when he thought there was no more room for any more of it.

His knees planted in the grass as his legs gave way, knees buckling under the weight of it all. His hands trembled as he pressed them against the cool granite, tracing the words engraved in its surface.

_Anthony Edward Stark_  
 _Friday, May 29, 1970 – Tuesday, October 27, 2054_  
 _Genius, Hero, Avenger_  
 _Iron Man_

Underneath this, there was an image of his arc reactor, scored into the stone, an eternal reminder of the mark the man had made upon the world. He pressed his fingers into it, and felt the lump in his throat turn molten, and travel up further to burn within his whole head, at his eyes and the back of his throat, leaving him choking on each gasping, shuddering breath he was forced to continue to take.

“ _No_ ,” he whispered. And he crawled closer, until his forehead could press into the cool stone, and his eyes closed as tears streamed down his face. “No, no, _no_ , Anthony-“ It hurt to even utter the name, breathed out against the headstone as his tears left dark trails across the granite, streaking downward into the dirt.

Insanity gripped at him. The urge to bury his fingers in the dirt and tear it away, to burrow into the earth and find him, to confirm that it was indeed his lover who lay in this plot of ground, out of his reach now, forever. Until death might take him too. And even then, their paths may never cross. What hope did he have that Tony Stark, who believed in no God, not even the one he slept with, would end up in the same afterlife as he?

Instead he merely curled his fingers around the stone, and wept against it, body shaking with the force of each sob.

Time once again ceased to mean anything. He cared little if it was day or night, or if Heimdall saw him, or if Thor searched for him. He alternated between rage and pain, that what few years there had been left of this mortal man’s life had been snatched away from him because of Odin’s punishment. Less than forty years. Longer than he had thought, locked up as he was. But still so little time, wasted. Gone.

When the tears had dried up, he merely leaned into the headstone and traced the letters, over and over, circling the arc reactor in a hollow echo of a motion he had once performed on the real thing, as they lay in bed together and whispered their secrets and fears and desires, and touch became taste, and that little light had cast its shadows over their bodies as they moved together.

“I love you, Tony Stark,” he whispered, as he opened his eyes and found it had indeed gone dark, the hours passing regardless of his turmoil and grief. Shadows fell over them, him and the grave where his beloved lay, forty years older than when they had first met, but no less the man he had been enamored with.

Lightning laced across the sky overheard, briefly lighting up his countenance as he looked skyward toward it.

Time would once again need to be given meaning, to be allowed some hold over him. For as long as he was free, he had time once more. He would need to put it to good use.

His limbs still trembled as he rose, drawing back from the place where his love lay below, leaving nothing behind to hint at his presence than the faint indent of his knees in the grass and the lingering tear tracks in the stone, which would soon enough dry. It would be as if he were never here. Which was as it should be. Even in death, it was better if the name Loki did not follow Tony Stark’s.

The thunder rumbled, and he could almost taste the ozone.

Thor was coming.

But Loki was already gone.  


**Author's Note:**

> I had the Bioshock version of Danny Boy on repeat while writing this. I apologize.


End file.
